Cathy read the leaflet carefully, glanced back at her mixing bowl and then put it down again. She wouldn’t know anyone and it would be terribly awkward. What if everyone there already knew each other? What if nobody talked to her? What if she spent the whole time sitting alone and watching everyone else chat? It would be horrible and certainly wouldn’t do much to make her feel better.
But then, what if the people there were lovely? What if, by going, she helped someone, even if it was only in a small way? Wasn’t helping the one thing she did really well? She’d cared for her mum for all those years, after all, and if she didn’t know how to do anything else, she at least knew how to do that. Wouldn’t that give her the sense of worth she was so sorely missing now that her mum – her reason to get up in the morning – was gone? Wasn’t it worth the risk? Surely the people who went to the coffee morning couldn’t be that dismissive and uncaring that they’d sit by and see her there alone without coming to talk to her? They must be nice people if they were there for charity, surely?
She glanced at her mixing bowl once again and smiled slowly. She’d cared for her mum and she’d done a decent-enough job, but maybe that wasn’t the only thing she was good at. She didn’t have fancy qualifications, but everyone had always said she sure could bake.
Two
‘Not that I’d ever want you to leave me, of course…’ Fleur dumped a large vase of carnations onto the display stand currently positioned at the entrance of her market stall, French for Flowers. She’d called it French for Flowers because her name was Fleur, and someone had once pointed out the irony that she ran a florist. Before that it had been called Moody Blooms but then someone in the next town had decided to call their florist Moody Blooms and, on a whim, Fleur had decided to change hers. That was a long time before Cathy had started working for her. ‘But you could do a lot worse than set up your own stall in here,’ she continued. ‘There’ll be one coming up when Ernest retires and closes his key-cutting business.’
Wiping her hands on her apron, she turned to face Cathy.
‘I couldn’t do that.’ Cathy glanced around with more than a touch of anxiety in her expression – even though it was unlikely anyone would be listening in on their conversation. The other stallholders were busy setting up for the day themselves or chatting to staff and early customers; they certainly didn’t have time to stop and strain to hear what Fleur and Cathy were talking about. She lowered her voice anyway. ‘I’d be in competition with the cake stall that’s already here.’
Fleur hauled another vase filled with pink roses to the display. ‘So?’
‘They’d hate me.’
‘I reckon there’d be room for the two of you. Anyway, if their cakes are as good as yours then they’d have no reason to hate you. Half the time they sell out before the end of the day so I think there’s trade enough to go round.’
Fleur sniffed hard. It was always cold in Linnetford’s old stone market building, even during the summer, and Fleur’s nose was always running. There had been a brief but doomed campaign by a few stallholders to move the market into a newer and more comfortable location, but most of the townsfolk were so fond of the old place – which had been a commerce centre during the Industrial Revolution, where goods were bought and sold by the gentlemen of ‘new money’ and the town made its wealth – that the bid was quickly snuffed out. And so Linnetford kept its draughty old market building, complete with vast glass roof panels, scrolled iron joists where pigeons nested and constantly plagued the caretaker, and wheat-coloured stone walls. The few who had complained were invited to leave and find themselves shop premises if they didn’t like it.
‘Last thing they’ve usually only got the factory-made ones they buy in left over; nobody wants them like they want the fresh ones.’
‘I couldn’t bake enough in my little kitchen to last all day on a stall either.’
‘Maybe you could if you got help. Or even hire a kitchen space… I mean, I don’t know how you’d do that but you could look into it.’
Cathy shook her head. ‘Even if I wanted to, I don’t know the first thing about running a market stall. And I like working with you anyway.’ She paused, a worried expression casting a sudden shadow over her face. ‘Unless you don’t want me to work here anymore?’
Fleur started to laugh. ‘Of course I do, you daft lump! I was just saying people would queue round the block to buy your cakes!’
‘I don’t know about that…’
‘Trust me – they would.’
Cathy shrugged, though she was blushing from the compliment. ‘I like baking for friends, when there’s no pressure. If I baked to make a living I’d get so stressed about it, I’d end up cocking every recipe up and making everything taste horrible.’
Fleur poked a finger between her dark braids and gave her head a lazy scratch as she studied Cathy for a moment. And then she seemed to shake herself and shrugged. ‘You’d know that better than anyone else.’
Cathy wasn’t sure how to respond to this, so she didn’t. She guessed that Fleur was touching on a lack of confidence in her abilities that even Cathy knew everyone could see plainly. She wasn’t offended by the comment; if she was totally honest with herself, she felt it was probably a fair appraisal.
‘Do you want the gerberas out front too?’ she asked instead. ‘It won’t be too draughty for them?’
‘Oh yes, they’re hard as nails are gerberas. Stick ’em out – they won’t mind a bit of cold.’
‘It’s funny,’ Cathy said as she cut open a parcel of vivid orange flowers and dropped them into a large vase, ‘they look so tropical you wouldn’t imagine they’d survive a British winter.’
‘A bit like me then,’ Fleur said with a raspy laugh. ‘Looks can be deceiving. Although…’ she continued, ‘sometimes I dream of a nice mild Barbadian winter. I’ve got my dad to thank for that, moving us to England without even asking me.’
‘I thought they’d come to England when you were very little?’
‘Exactly!’ Fleur tipped a bag of coins into the till for the day’s float.
‘But you wouldn’t go back, would you?’
‘I don’t miss the hurricanes – that’s for sure,’ she said with a wry grin, ‘and I’m more British than anything else. No, cold or not, I’m happy enough in England. I’ve been here since I was five, after all, and I hardly know anything else.’
‘It must be lovely having such a gorgeous place to visit when you go to see family.’
‘I wouldn’t know; it takes me so long to get round to all the family, I hardly see any of the islands! I suppose it is though.’ She nodded at the vase Cathy was carrying. ‘Be a darling and straighten those out a bit, would you? They look like they’re having a fight in there.’
Cathy nodded and then set it down. ‘Talking of baking, I’m going to bake some cakes for the coffee morning at St Cuthbert’s next week.’
‘Oh yes, I had a leaflet through about that. It’s for cancer research, right?’